Yep, you read that title right: Dead Space 2 has multiplayer. Before you start angrily clack-clacking in the comments about developers shoe-horning multiplayer into games that don't need it, listen to this: It's actually pretty fun. It won't cause you to snap in half your copies of Halo: Reach or Modern Warfare 2 in a spontaneous act of jubilation, but it will extend the life of Dead Space 2 and provide you with a nice little diversion from the frights of the single-player campaign.

Matches break down into two rounds, pitting four humans against four gruesomely disfigured Necromorphs (players switch sides after the first round). Developer Visceral Games designed each of the game's five maps around an objective that the humans must complete before time runs out -- with the Necromorphs doing everything in their power to stop them.

Playing as one of the human security forces will be familiar to anyone who's donned protagonist Isaac Clarke's security suit. It's still satisfying to lop limbs off with ease, but suiting up for Team Necromorph provides a much more unique experience. Here's an account of my life as a Necromorph, based on the two maps playable at an event last week:

Titan Mines

In this map, the humans collect parts of a shock mine located in a network of tunnels and caverns, then bring those parts to a central location to blow out a door and scramble away with their lives. As a Necromorph, I could choose from three classes -- the Spitter, the Lurker, and the Pack -- and spawn from any number of vents near my human prey. (A fourth class, the Puker, who packs some vile vomit, will be available in the final game.)

I started out as the Pack, a speedy bipedal with the body of a child and a set of razor-sharp claws. The Visceral employee behind my shoulder encouraged me to leap at the security forces and pull the attack trigger for a viscous grab. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I latched onto an opponent and jammed away at the X button to hack at his flesh. I knocked off half his health before he was able to rip me off and pistol-whip my head into tiny pieces. Turns out if you want to succeed as the Pack, you need to work in, well, a pack.

While waiting for the speedy respawn timer, I switched over to the Lurker, a tiny crawling thing with three tendrils that pop out of its back that scared the bejesus out of me on more than one occasion in Dead Space 1. Lurkers can stick on to walls and ceilings for surprise ambushes -- cool in theory but extremely disorienting in practice. I spent most of my time figuring out which way was up.

I had more luck as the Spitter, a humanoid creature with leg-like appendages above their arms. Spitters are slower-moving than the other Necromorphs, but they make up for it with the acid loogies they can hock at the humans from range. You can even charge them up, like a 6th grader getting ready to drop a big, snotty globule off the side of a building. I chose to spawn my Spitter on one of the ledges surrounding the completed shock mine. From there I could snipe with abandon while my Lurker and Pack pals swarmed the security forces on the ground. With the distraction in front of them, the humans had no idea I was spitting death from above. I racked up the kills.

Still, the humans had better coordination than us, enabling them to set off the shock mine and get the hell out of Titan. Balls.

Escape

Escape tasks the security forces with initializing four escape pods and then heading to the launch area to clamber into one -- hopefully with all appendages intact. It's a similar structure to Titan Mines, but the slimmed-down imperative of this narrative -- "Escape!" -- made this map a lot more fun.

After my previous success with the Spitter, I decided to start the match as one of them, but without a ledge to surreptitiously snipe from, the humans easily separated my limbs from my body. I switched over to the Lurker and had the same orientation problem as last time -- what I thought was the ceiling was actually a wall, which put me directly at sight level with the security forces' guns. These little buggers are definitely going to take some practice to master.

I tried my hand at the Pack again. By now I had found the rhythm of the jump-and-grab and could latch onto humans with ease. I realized that even if you got the jump on someone, it's very difficult to bring them down yourself, so I started seeking out my fellow Pack-mates and clawing away at humans while my buddies launched themselves from above. My kill-assist total grew exponentially.

The humans managed to start all of the initiation sequences, so both sides descended on the escape pods, collapsing the large map into one tension-filled room. I got into a trigger-happy spawn/die/repsawn cycle as the Pack; the limited health and quick respawn time of the Necromorphs encourage this sort of behavior. One, two, three humans fought their way into the pods, but with the odds now 4-to-1 we had a good chance of stopping the last guy. The countdown timer dropped below a minute. I could feel victory tingling through my razor-sharp claws. We cut him down with about 15 seconds left, giving him only one last push to make...

Which he made, with less than 10 seconds remaning. The entire room erupted in groans and cheers.

Say what you want about the necessity of multiplayer in Dead Space 2, but a reaction like that means Visceral Games is doing something right. I'm looking forward to slipping into a Necromorph's skin again this coming January.